On 23 May, the New York Times ran a lengthy front-page article titled “The Misery of Life Under Occupation”, recounting the personal stories of various Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem subjected to lifetimes of misery by the state of Israel.
The article appeared just days after a ceasefire halted the Israeli military’s latest bout of butchery in the Gaza Strip, which killed 248 Palestinians - including 67 children - and was touched off by, inter alia, Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem.
Among those profiled in the Times piece was Muhammad Sandouka, 42, who was forced to tear down his own family’s Jerusalem home after being given a choice between do-it-yourself demolition and Israeli government demolition - the latter option also entailing a $10,000 fee to be paid by Sandouka, for the privilege of being made homeless.
The alleged reason for disappearing the Sandouka home: it was interfering with touristic views of the Old City.
Stressing that “no Palestinian is insulated from the occupation’s reach”, the Times writers note that - for the approximately three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem - the impending forcible removal of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah was a “story [that] was exceptional only because it attracted an international spotlight”. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.